Tap for anything up to about £100, insert the card and type your PIN above that or whenever the terminal asks, and always choose pounds when a machine offers to bill you in your own currency. Adding a fee for paying by card has been unlawful in Britain since January 2018 for ordinary consumer cards, with one exception that applies specifically to cards issued abroad.
Britain moved to card payments early and fast. Terminals are everywhere, the staff expect you to tap, and nobody will blink if you pay for a 90p bread roll with a watch. What confuses visitors is not the technology but the small print: why the limit is sometimes different, why the machine suddenly demands a PIN after a week of tapping, and which of the extra charges on a bill are allowed.
Our overview of money in London covers notes, coins and the daily fare caps. This page is the rules behind the reader.
The rules in one box (September 2026)
- Usual single contactless limit
- £100, but since March 2026 it is set by your card issuer rather than by regulation
- When you will need the PIN
- Above your issuer's tap limit, on the first use of a new card, and periodically after several taps in a row
- Surcharge for paying by card
- Unlawful for consumer cards where both banks are in the UK
- Surcharge on a card issued abroad
- Lawful, but only up to the seller's actual cost of accepting it
- Business and corporate cards
- Can be surcharged
- Minimum spend to use a card
- Lawful. So is refusing cash, and so is refusing cards
- Black cabs
- Obliged to take contactless, and forbidden to add anything for it
- Paying in your own currency
- Always compare the rate shown before accepting
The tap limit, and who decides it now
For years the answer was simple: £100 a tap, set by regulation, the same for everyone. That changed in March 2026. The Financial Conduct Authority announced on 19 December 2025 that firms with strong fraud controls would be allowed to set their own contactless limits, and the rule took effect the following March.
In practice almost nothing has moved. The FCA itself said it expected most banks to keep their existing limits for the time being, and £100 is still what you will meet in a London shop. But the number is now a property of your card rather than of the country, which has two consequences for a visitor.
First, your limit may be lower than a British customer's, because your own bank sets it. Second, many issuers now let customers lower the limit themselves or switch contactless off entirely, which is worth doing before you travel if you are nervous about a lost card, and worth checking you have not already done by accident.
The terminal will tell you either way. If the amount is over your limit, the reader simply asks you to insert the card instead.
Why it suddenly wants your PIN
This is the single most common confusion, and the explanation is that a tap is an exemption from a security check rather than a payment method in its own right.
Under the rules that applied until this year, the exemption ran out in two ways: once your untapped total since the last PIN reached £300, or after five taps in a row, whichever came first. At that point the next payment asked for the PIN, the counter reset, and you went back to tapping. The wording that now sits in the FCA's technical standards no longer names those figures; it allows contactless without the extra check where the provider judges the payment to be low risk. Issuers have simply carried on running counters of their own, so the behaviour is unchanged even though the numbers are no longer published.
What this means on the ground: know your PIN. Do not travel on a card whose PIN you have forgotten, because sooner or later a terminal will insist, usually in a queue. A phone or watch wallet sidesteps the problem, because your face, fingerprint or passcode does the job the PIN would have done, which is why wallet payments have no tap ceiling in most shops.
The first payment on a newly issued card almost always needs the PIN. If you have just been sent a replacement card, do not let the first thing you try to buy in London be a bus fare or a station ticket. Use it in a shop with a chip-and-PIN terminal first, then tap for the rest of the trip.
Surcharges: the ban, and the gap that affects visitors
On 13 January 2018 a new regulation was inserted into the Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012. In plain terms it says a seller must not charge you a fee for paying by card. It covers debit cards, credit cards and equivalent instruments, and it is why the "2.5% for credit cards" line disappeared from British restaurant bills and booking pages.
Two limits on that ban are worth knowing, and the second is the one nobody tells visitors.
The ban does not cover commercial cards, so a company card can still be surcharged. And it only applies in full when the banks at both ends of the payment are in the United Kingdom. Where one of them is not, which is the situation every time a card issued overseas is used in a British shop, the outright ban falls away and a weaker rule takes its place: any fee must not exceed what accepting that particular instrument actually costs the seller.
So a surcharge on a foreign-issued card is not automatically unlawful in Britain. It is rare in London, because most businesses run one policy for everybody, but you may meet it on a large transaction, at a car hire desk or with a small independent trader. If you are charged, the fee has to be a genuine reflection of cost rather than a round percentage, and it must be disclosed before you pay. Our guide to complaining and consumer rights in Britain explains where to take it if it looks like neither.
One place the ban is absolute is the taxi. Every licensed black cab in London is obliged by Transport for London to carry a card machine in working order, to take contactless payment, and to add nothing to the fare for doing so. Our comparison of black cabs, minicabs and ride apps has the rest of the fare rules.
Minimum spends, card-only and cash-only
A minimum spend is a different animal from a surcharge, and it is perfectly lawful. A café can decline to take a card for a £1.80 coffee and tell you the floor is £5. It is not charging you extra for the card; it is choosing not to accept that payment at that price.
The wider principle, set out by the Bank of England, is that a business decides what it will accept. Nothing in British law compels a shop to take cash, and nothing compels it to take cards. Both card-only venues and the dwindling number of cash-only ones are operating within the rules. Our guide to how much cash to bring works out the small float that covers the gaps.
A handful of places keep a staffed desk for people who cannot or will not use a machine. Uber Boat, for instance, sells river-bus tickets in person at Tate Britain as well as through its app. These are exceptions and shrinking in number.
"Would you like to pay in pounds or in your own currency?"
This question appears on card terminals in shops, on restaurant bills and on cash machine screens. It is a real choice with a real cost, and the wording is designed to make the familiar option look safer.
Take your own currency and the sum is converted by whoever runs that terminal, at a rate of their choosing. Take pounds and the job falls to your own bank instead, at a rate and a fee you were able to look up before you flew. Hold the screen's figure against your bank's if you know it; if you do not, pounds keeps the charge where you have a relationship.
Ask your bank two specific things before you fly: what it charges as a foreign transaction fee on a purchase in pounds, and what it charges on a cash withdrawal in pounds. They are often different. Our page on changing money in London covers the exchange side, and our list of common tourist scams covers the quieter charges that turn up on a bill.
The tip screen and the currency screen look alike and do different things. On a British card machine you may be shown a tip prompt and a currency prompt within seconds of each other, both with a large green button. Read each one. Adding 20% by accident and then converting the result at a poor rate is an expensive two seconds; our guide to tipping in London explains what is actually expected.
When a British terminal refuses your card
Declines abroad are usually the issuing bank, not the shop. The common causes, in rough order of frequency:
- A fraud block. Your bank has seen an unusual country and stopped the card. Many banks now expect you to approve the payment in their app, which needs data or wi-fi.
- A one-time code sent by text. If your home SIM is switched off to avoid roaming charges, the code never arrives. Our guide to SIM cards, eSIMs and roaming covers keeping a number reachable while using local data.
- A payment wallet holding a card issued abroad. These work in shops but are less reliable on public transport; our page on using a foreign bank card on London transport goes through what works.
- A dead phone. A wallet that cannot wake up cannot pay, and on the Tube it cannot touch out either, which has its own consequences, explained in what happens if you forget to touch out.
Carry two cards from different networks, kept in different places, and know your bank's emergency number. If the worst happens, our page on what to do if your phone or wallet is stolen sets out the first hour.
Where a card is not optional
London buses take no cash at all: a contactless card, a payment-enabled phone or watch, or an Oyster card is the only way on board. Our guide to London buses and night buses covers the Hopper fare, and our comparison of Oyster and contactless explains the daily and weekly caps.
Use one card or one device per person for the whole day on transport. Tap with the phone before lunch and the plastic card afterwards and the system treats you as two travellers, which can lose you the cap altogether. Hotels are the other place a card is effectively compulsory, because most will place a hold on it at check-in against extras; our page on hotel extras and hidden costs explains how those holds work.
What your card protects, and what it does not
British law gives credit card holders a strong remedy when something goes wrong with a purchase. Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 makes the lender behind a credit card share responsibility with the trader when a purchase was misdescribed or the deal was not honoured. The item has to carry a cash price of more than £100 and no more than £30,000. It is the reason British shoppers put deposits on a credit card.
The important qualification for a visitor is that this comes from a British statute and attaches to credit agreements regulated in the UK. If your card was issued at home, ask your own provider what protection it gives on a purchase made abroad before you rely on it, and keep the receipt either way.
Separately, note that visitors cannot reclaim VAT on shopping in Great Britain, so the price on the label is the price you pay whichever card you use. Our page on tax-free shopping in the UK explains the one narrow exception. And the vocabulary of all this, from "chip and PIN" to "do you take card?", is in our guide to British words for visitors.
One last practical note: an NHS prescription charge, a museum donation and a pharmacy purchase can all go on a card, which our guide to pharmacies and minor illness in London covers in more detail.
Frequently asked questions
What is the contactless limit in the UK?
Usually £100 for a single payment, but since March 2026 it is set by the bank that issued your card rather than fixed by regulation. Your own bank may set a lower figure, and many now let customers change it. Payments made with a phone or watch wallet are generally not capped in shops, because your face, fingerprint or passcode does the job the PIN would have done.
Why does the card machine ask for my PIN when I have been tapping all week?
Because contactless is an exemption from a security check rather than a separate payment method. Card issuers run a running total of untapped spending and a count of consecutive taps, and when either passes their threshold the next payment asks for the PIN and the counter resets. Know your PIN before you travel.
Is it legal to charge extra for paying by card in Britain?
Not for ordinary consumer cards where both banks are in the UK: that was banned on 13 January 2018. Business and corporate cards can still be surcharged. And where the card was issued outside the UK, the outright ban does not apply, although any fee must not exceed what accepting that card actually costs the seller, and it must be disclosed before you pay.
Should I pay in pounds or in my home currency?
Compare the rate on the screen with your own bank's rate. If you cannot, choose pounds. That leaves the currency conversion with your own bank, whose fee and rate you can check before you travel, rather than with the company operating the terminal, whose rate you cannot.
Can a London shop refuse to take cash?
Yes. The Bank of England explains that a business chooses what forms of payment it accepts, and no British law requires a shop to take notes and coins. The same freedom lets a shop set a minimum spend for card payments or decline cards altogether, which is not the same thing as adding a surcharge.
Sources
- Financial Conduct Authority - Greater flexibility on setting contactless limits (checked September 2026)
- FCA Handbook - Technical standards, exemptions from strong customer authentication (checked September 2026)
- The Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, regulation 6A (checked September 2026)
- The Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012, regulation 6B (checked September 2026)
- Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 75 (checked September 2026)
- Bank of England - What is legal tender? (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Taxi fares (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Pay as you go (checked September 2026)